Technical Field
The present device relates to an instant-on no-frills no-human-intervention-required sound generation device. More particularly, it relates to the concept of soundscaping which includes auto-playback of one or more preloaded sound files when powered on with endless looping of playback with a semi-permanently installed or permanently installed device.
Background Discussion
Playback devices are well-known in the art, from the Victrola record players of the late 19th century through current art, such as music players, cell phones, and the like.
A brief look at the early record players will allow someone skilled in the art to see how playback devices evolved into the devices they are today. The first playback device was the well-known “phonograph” invented by Thomas Edison in 1877, for which he received a patent. His phonograph originally recorded sound onto a tinfoil sheet wrapped around a rotating cylinder, the sound emanating from a brass horn.
The first flat-surfaced playback device was proposed by Charles Cros at relatively the same time as Edison's and moved into manufacture in 1881, when a recording was cut into a wax disc and subsequently transferred to copper electrotype.
From there playback devices morphed into interchangeable sound file-based acoustic devices, such as the gramophone, which played vinyl discs, and was invented by Emile Berliner in 1887. The key feature was the interchangeability, which made possible rapid playback of multiple sound files.
With the introduction of electricity in the early 20th century, discerning ears tired of the mechanical wind-up energy required in the early gramophones—which caused the record to play slower when the stored-up energy began to fade—and replaced the gramophone's mechanical wind-up motor with an elecric motor. As designs progressed, manufacturers chose to build jukeboxes that offered users the ability to choose pre-loaded record albums to listen to.
As technology progressed, recording sound on tape became available in the early 1930's when Western Electric and others initially began recording sound on movie film using photoelectric technology: a space was left on one side of the movie film and the sound level was transcribed in this space in an optical manner; i.e., the amplitude of the sound level the instant it was analyzed was written as a black line in a graph. Playback was achieved using an “early years” photocell that measured the length of the black lines going past and translated that into an output voltage, which was routed to speakers. This early record-sound-on-film effort was a functional equivalent of pulse code modulation, albeit using optical technology.
In the 1930's in Germany, engineers began recording sound on magnetic tape; after World War II, this technology—previously restricted by Germany—became available in the United States and allied nations. Sound was initially recorded in analog format on tape stored in spools; later this became cassettes, eight-track, and other tape formats.
Analog to Digital
In the early 1980's the advent of microchips running software instructions on the early IBM PC and Apple][ gave rise to digital sound manipulation. In the early days of digital sound, while Jobs and Wozniak were inventing the Apple][ they attached a speaker to a PWM output pin and instead of feeding the PWM Sound Values they fed the PWM the “address select” data from the Apple]['s microchip. The chip used the current memory address of the Apple][ as the Sound Value and thus reproduced high-pitched sounds for high memory addresses and low-pitched sounds for low memory addresses. While they worked and their software ran on the Apple][ they listened to the tones generated by the addresses being used. It is a commonly-held belief that this is the first use of digital PWM to reproduce sound.
Digital sound reproduction efforts continued, and in the late 1980's the compact disc was invented and it proved a boon for the storage and playback of sound—thin, lightweight, not subject to erasure, compact discs provide users endless choices of long-term, permanent storage of high-quality sound. Compact disc “jukeboxes” are now common, and give users the ability to choose from hundreds of pre-loaded discs for playback.
The common denominator in this background art is that the playback devices in the prior art all offer choices and require loading of the sound source, and thus require setup. None appear to offer any method of instant-on playback of a pre-chosen pre-loaded sound source with the push of one button.